Sunday, September 25, 2011

The far too Short Weekend

Well it’s that time of the week again, so here’s another blog entry for my homework. This week was like any other week: four nights of reffing, one midterm, zero college football games, work until 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon… correction, this was not like any other week. It was a stressful week. Not saying I have it harder than others, but it was hard enough for me. Today feels like the only day of the weekend, and it’s already over; fortunately, it was (mostly) a good day.


Today started like any normal Sunday – church, home teaching, football viewing – but the best part was spending time with our friends the Nortons. I served my mission with Norton (his real name is Ian, but I just can’t call him that) and we’ve been pretty good friends since day one. In fact, the weekend I came up for his homecoming was the weekend I met Jocelyn. Anyways…he has been married for a year and lives 10-15 minutes away from us, and we do stuff with them on occasion. Tonight was one of those said occasions. I’m not sure where/when he learned to cook tacos (yes, it probably was Mexico, thank you) but he made some and we went over for dinner and games. Dinner was great, and games (game really) were alright…up until I lost. We decided to play poker with his loose change.

To put it frankly, I was dominating for three-fourths of the game. My wife told me I needed to let her win more and that this was the only card game I was good at and didn’t need to take it to the extreme to compensate. Then, on a hand where I had three of a kind, Norton and his wife went all in. I of course called, but little did I notice my wife did as well. The Nortons had nothing, so when I flipped my three of a kind of queens, I started singing celebratory music (The S.W.A.T. theme song. Don’t ask me why, but that music came to mind). I was feeling like king of the world. Then, when my wife flipped her cards, my kingdom crumbled. Full house, (or as she called it, three of a kind and a pair) queens over sevens. I was crushed. I couldn’t recover. I was scared and thrown of my groove. In my last ditch attempt, Norton said he had good vibes and I should go Maverick on the last hand (no look all in). The good vibes he got were apparently for Jocelyn. Three of a kind to my high card. And that was that. It was fun, but everyone seemed to enjoy my downfall more than the rest of the game. Even though I lost, it was still an enjoyable night and finally felt like the weekend. We definitely need to do stuff with them on a more frequent basis.

Now if I could only get 24 fantasy points from the Cowboys defense, I would be in heaven. What does that have to do with this post? Nothing, I wanted to include it since I haven’t blogged about it here.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

The Addition to our Family.

So, we have an announcement to make… Some of you may already know, but in case you don’t, here it is. We have a kitten. For all of you thinking I was going to announce we were going to have a kid, you have my permission to storm away from this site. You can also choose to laugh because I got you. So anyways, back to this cat. She’s black, her name is Pepper, and we got her about 2 months ago.

I have never been a cat person. I’ve always liked dogs more, always have, always will; however, Jocelyn is a cat person and has always wanted one. So we compromised and got a cat. Not true. The real story is that the neighborhood strays had 5 kittens and the neighbors upstairs rescued them and were giving them away for free. So we put in a claim for one of the white ones or one of the males... so, naturally, we ended up with a black female.

We weren’t sure what to expect (and we still aren’t) because kittens are crazy. The first night she was really timid and followed Jocelyn everywhere; she slept on a towel, didn’t use her litter box, and meowed a lot. The next day she learned how to use her litter box, how to climb and sleep in our bed, and she still meowed a lot. Fortunately the meowing has gone down, and she’s still a good litter box user. As for the bed – well let’s just say I get woken up routinely to a cat walking across my face. When we first got her, she was around six weeks old and she was tiny.
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She’s a little bigger now, but she’s still spastic. She likes to play with things that move. I don’t know if it’s her desires to pounce, but she likes to attack. One night I couldn’t sleep and neither could she, so I set up a contraption using the fan and a bath robe belt. I’m not sure if she had more fun or if I did, but it definitely was entertaining. Enough to film it actually. Unfortunately, due to time constraints and upload capabilities, I cannot post this video now. But I will eventually.

Even though she is a psycho, we love her and Jocelyn loves to take pictures of her. She was busy showing me all the pictures I could use on this blog, and I’m pretty sure she had between 10-20 pictures. So if you are that interested in seeing them (I wasn’t even that interested and she’s my cat…not to mention I’m in half the pictures) go ahead and talk to Jocelyn. And just for the record, if we were ever going to announce a child or anything like that, it would take a lot longer to hit the web, but better luck next time.

*Disclaimer: I’m not one to blog about my cat. I’m not that kind of guy. But when you need to blog every week for your class and you have to include a video and picture at some point, it makes perfect sense. I’d rather blog about fantasy football personally. Let’s go Mario Manningham and Hakeem Nicks, and whoever my brother plays against Danny Torres.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Friday Night Football

Normally, my goal is to keep this page relatively sports free, and save that for the joint blog I do with Nick Barnum and Jason Robinson (which we haven’t been doing…oops) but because I have to blog for my M Com 320 class, I thought I would put it here. Now if you know anything about me, you know how much I love football. Simply put, I can’t get enough of it. I’m not 100% sure why it is, but if there is anything football related on, my attention is on it. Just ask my wife. If we go out to eat and Sportscenter is on…well let’s just say she’s not thrilled by the idea.

Now I enjoy watching NFL because it is the best team sport and it has the best athletes in the world. I enjoy watching college because it is the purest version of the sport, and has the most variety –But I HATE the BCS. Worst playoff system ever! — of all levels of football. I enjoy high school because it’s played simply because of desire and school pride, and because today is Friday, high school football games were going on all over the state. The one I was worried about was Dixie at Pine View.


Now I think I love high school football the most, even though I am now in college and don’t have any fantasy teams made up of high school kids. The reason why is because I have been where they are, I remember the joys and pains. But the biggest reason – I wouldn’t be who I am today without high school football. I would love to explain everything about it, but it would take too long, and this post is already lengthy. When you have time, I invite you to go to http://newmediaandgreatworks.blogspot.com/2010/11/radical-changes-to-my-passion-football.html It was for a class assignment, so it isn’t specifically tailored to tonight’s post, but it should give you an idea.


For now, I will just end it here. Congrats to the Dixie Flyers for beating Pine View on their homecoming. Beating PV was never something I accomplished in 3 years of varsity football, so I’m jealous. But I am grateful for those 3 years because they helped shape me. High school football on a Friday night – there’s nothing quite like it.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Value of Relationships: A Small Tribute to Pule

I have a slight confession to make: I didn't want to start blogging because of class, or because I wanted you to know something about my wedding. Granted, I had to start blogging because of my class, and my wedding was a good place to start, but what I've really wanted to write about has been on my mind the last 2 or 3 weeks now.

A few weeks ago we went down to St. George. If I remember right, it was for two of my long time friends wedding. Ren and Tia and Glenn and Camille. I've known Glenn since I was 5ish and Ren, since...whatever elementary grade we were on the same flag football team. Now normally, I'm not one to travel or spend money unless it's something serious, like Disneyland, my honeymoon, or Fantasy Football (yes, i capitalized both words out of respect). But I have a strong belief that people are the most important thing on this planet, and supporting them is something you should do as a friend.

Now you're probably saying, "Well yes, I feel the same way", but do you really? I know I don't always, and I can give you plenty of examples i.e. : writing my brother consistently, or worrying about my checklist of what i need to do today over my wife. Granted, I do have some good stories to my name, like switching my work schedule last minute, waking up at 4:30 am and driving for 5 hours to go to Tyler and Shalyse's wedding right before finals week. And I've been to a fair share of other celebratory events (generally, there is food, so I'm not totally saint like...although latter-day saints are suckers for food, so maybe I am saint like) such as weddings, farewells and homecomings. And I can also give examples of when I felt slighted by others, but that's not the point.

What I'm getting at is the weekend I was down for the weddings when something else came up. My dad had recently returned from a business trip and was on his way to go visit Pule Misa in the hospital. Now, for some background on Pule, he was in my home ward before my mission, we both worked at the same place, and he was an assistant coach (and later on head coach) for the volleyball team. He was one of the nicest guys and would always make you laugh. He would drive 14 hours one way just to watch his daughters play volleyball and then turn around and drive it back. He'd even take the time to talk to you right before or after the volleyball games he was coaching. If my memory serves me right, he had moved out of my ward before my mission, but still came to my farewell talk and even gave me a lei. So like I said, a nice guy and a giver.

Now the reason my dad was headed to the hospital is because Pule was diagnosed with cancer a month or two earlier, and it was stage 4. I didn't know this before, but stage 4 is some bad stuff. He had been in the hospital for a little while, and was getting better, but had taken a turn for the worse and was sent to ICU during my dad's trip. My dad went and saw him most days before his trip to Maine, and made sure to go visit as soon as he could. He even brought Pule's family some fresh lobster. On a side note, I may not always get along with my dad, and because it's my blog, I wont blame me for it, but let's be honest, we know whose to blame, but he is always doing things for others. Maybe it was because he got in the habit while being a bishop, or maybe that's why he was called as a bishop, but my dad is quite the giver. And so, as he was going to make his trip, he invited me to come along. I didn't have a check list to get in my way, and I hadn't seen Pule in months, so I said yes.

When I got there, I nearly started crying. If you didn't know Pule, you need to know he was one big tough guy. He would do a job at work by himself that would take 4-5 of us to do. Not to mention we'd all complain, and yet I think he enjoyed it. But when I showed up, he was reduced to a shell of his former strength. In all honesty, he still could have beat me in arm wrestling, but he had deteriorated significantly. I don't know if it was the medication, or being fed via a tube that did it to him, but it was hard to see. And yet, when we walked in, he smiled. When I asked how he was (in retrospect, it was a dumb question) he gave me a thumbs up. Honestly, if I were in his position, I would have started complaining, or at least making jokes to avoid the reality of the situation. We talked to him for a little while and as we left I told him to feel better....and he gave me another thumbs up, and I almost started crying again. I guess it would be worth noting that he could barely move, and couldn't speak, so giving me a thumbs up was a lot. As we left, we stopped and talked to his wife and then went back to my parents house. And then that Sunday, we came home.

Next Monday morning, I did some pre-work facebook stalking, like I normally do, and I found out Pule had passed early that morning. I was sad at the news, but also extremely glad that I visited him the Saturday before. But I wonder, if I had a to-do list that day, would I have gone? Would I have given a few minutes of my day for that man who gave so much to others? Quite frankly, I don't want to know the answer, but I am grateful that I had the time and that I went and saw him. As soon as I found out, I had made it up in my mind that I would go to the funeral. So that next Sunday, my cousin and I drove down, went to the funeral Monday morning, and then drove back home. Financially, it didn't make sense, I didn't go for vacation purposes or do anything entertaining, and I was barely there long enough to spend time with my family. But I was there, and the trip was more than worth it. Unfortunately, we missed the viewing, but it was still a beautiful funeral. I know he would have done the same for me, so I figured it was the least I could do for him.

And as I left, I wondered "Are we as people so busy with "things" that we don't have time for people?" If so, shame on us. I know we need to work, and go to school, and be productive, but are we so bad that we can't even take 10 minutes of time to write missionaries that we wont see for 2 years, or catch up with an old friend because we have to go do some chores at home? Hopefully we can figure out how to have good relationships now, because that's all that we'll have with us in the next world, and if we can't learn to value people here, when will we ever?

So this blog post is more about me reflecting on life, on how I treat others, and the example of Pule. Thank you Pule for being such a good person and example. This isn't much of a tribute, but I hope it conveys my appreciation for him and the value he put on his relationships with people.